Socialism and a Reading Room

TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN SOCIALISM

Carl Granados: “I can’t understand the alternate reality my Republican friends and some of your critics must live in, saying Obama is a socialist or that he is engaging in class welfare because he wants to return to Clinton era rates.  Do these people think America was a socialist nation before Reagan, when tax rates where close to 90% for the top?  Do they believe the American Dream was dead before The Gipper?  Do they forget that under Clinton tax increases the economy grew more than under Reagan, that we were starting to balance the budget, and that the Middle Class got stronger (but weaker under Reagan and the two Bush’s)?  Do they forget that Clinton, who is now viewed as a moderate by Republicans, was once attacked as tho he was the anti-Christ who would destroy the American economy by Fox, Rush, and the other similar Ditto heads?  Finally, if higher taxes kill wealth, competition, and inventiveness why are California and New York, among the highest-taxed states, also among the most successful?  None of us likes paying more taxes, but the idea that we can pay down the deficit, go to war, triple spending and magically pay for it with tax cuts for the rich is delusional and has been proven wrong under three Republican Presidents.  How much does a failed policy have to be proven wrong until common sense replaces ideology?”

Good question.  I meant to post this before the election, but it remains relevant as Congress and the President get back into the trenches.

THE CHARLES NOLAN READING ROOM

Here are a few photos.  Went I went to post them, the first was so large it would have spread over your entire desk and wall and out the front door for you to see it all without scrolling, and try as I might I couldn’t get WordPress to agree to downsize it.  So I called Luann in Hawaii, asked her to choose five or six (if possible, Luann, the ones without the cardboard boxes on the tables — those were from before I shelved all the books), and will wake to see if it worked.  If it did, these are photos of the Reading Room (two rooms, really, an anteroom and then the main room) with thousands of books and magazines that Charles collected over a lifetime, now housed at the High School of Fashion Industries in New York:

Click an image to see it larger